Lessons Learned

The start of a sandcastle that I found along Lake Michigan when I first decided to begin this blog

This week marks the one-year anniversary of my beloved blog. As they say, time flies when you are having fun. Though I can’t profess to have been the most consistent poster of all time over the last twelve months, I am proud to say that I stuck with it, and I now have over 130 posts (!) chronicling my days spent along the shores of Lake Michigan. This is all the encouragement that I need to keep the entries coming, and I look forward to sharing more of my life with you in the years to come.

As predicted, I have learned and, in some cases, confirmed a great deal through the blogging process. Among the lessons thus far:

• Delicious food, nice shoes, fresh flowers, and clean sheets do wonders for a healthy state of mind.
• Being in your 30s is an experience unto itself.
• There’s something magical, addicting, and downright blog-ish about creating the bokeh effect with your camera.
• Sometimes, work, after-hours commitments, wild weekends, travel and/or pure laziness get in the way of posting. When the opportunity arises, you reemerge, remind yourself of the importance of balance, and begin to compose your thoughts again.
• Winters in Chicago are very, very, very long.
• There are very few dilemmas that fun nail polish can’t cure.
• Patient, camera-wielding boyfriends make life worth living.
• There’s something incredibly special and uplifting in the act of appreciating the mundane.
• An 800 sq. ft. condo can only hold so many possessions and afford so many adult luxuries.
• Life is not perfect. Not even close. And the sooner you accept it, the better off you are.